


Mixed Paint

by stifledlaughter



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Deep Dish Nine, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 21:59:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2597885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stifledlaughter/pseuds/stifledlaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"With the paint that nobody wanted because it was mixed, she made things that were beautiful."</p>
<p>Ziyal paints murals on the side of Deep Dish Nine, and Jake takes notice. </p>
<p>Deep Dish Nine AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mixed Paint

She dipped the paintbrush in the swirl of blue and purple paint. As she raised it, drops fell back in, some splattering, covering her lap with freckles of color.

_“They’re mixed buckets,” the stage manager had said to her when Ziyal had asked why they were throwing away half- or quarter-empty buckets of paint after the high school’s latest production. “No one will use the mixed paint. It isn’t worth it.”_

Ziyal painted broad strokes across the brick, layering more paint on top of the previous week’s colors. The light lavender-blue paint dripped down the rough wall, but she would fix that later.

_“Sure, you can take them. Some are mostly used up, and others hardly at all. If you can carry them, you can have them. Nobody wants them anyway.”_

_She had spent hours that day lugging the paint cans back to the storage shed behind Deep Dish Nine. By the time she was done, her arms were strained, her fingers raw and callused, and her heart happy._

With the paint that nobody wanted because it was mixed, she made things that were beautiful.

It was Kira’s idea to give Ziyal the little stretch of wall in the alley to paint on after Ziyal had asked if she could do anything artistic for Deep Dish Nine. “We could use some art around here,” she said after Sisko had given it the go. “Nothing controversial, but just… pretty? I don’t know. I’m no artist.”

Going with the space station theme, Ziyal had started with galaxies. Because the high school’s play had been a mermaid-universe production of Othello, there was plenty of blues and greens to go around. She painted nebulas and stars, black holes and supernovas. Suns and moons soon blanketed the gritty brick wall.

She was creating a universe with colors no one had wanted. With her brush she was forming shapes that defined themselves outside of the mixed paint they were made of.

\-----

The small stretch of wall was only visible if you were walking past Deep Dish Nine away from Quark’s, and at first didn’t attract much attention from anyone but the staff.

“Wow, that’s so pretty!” exclaimed Jadzia, who had come over after taking out the trash. “You’ve got real talent, Ziyal.”

Mr. Sisko had come by several times in the evenings when Ziyal had found the most time to work on it. “Good, good,” he said, nodding thoughtfully.

Once Ziyal had found the silvery-blue paint, she decided to paint the logo of the pizza shop, with the arcing swoops and angles of the station outlined by the dark-green-steely-gray paint she had found.

It was the space station that had caught Jake’s attention as he was rushing by the pizzeria after school one day to pick up a slice before the high school’s writing club began. He’d been so busy that week he hadn’t slowed down at all to see the developing art mural. “Whoa,” he breathed, seeing the galaxies on a simple brick wall come to life. “Hey Julian!” he called out to the lanky med student dragging trash cans around the corner from the back door. “Did you see this?”

Julian stopped dragging the cans and straightened up, narrowly catching his hat as it fell from his head. “Oh, yeah, Ziyal finished painting the station yesterday. She’s not sure what she’ll do next. It’s great, isn’t it?” He tried to squash the hat back onto his curls, but they fought back, per usual.

“Ziyal did _all_ of this?” Jake took a step back to fully see the entire brick wall covered with blue, green, silver, purple, and black paint, with the space station in the middle, windows twinkling, and if one looked closely enough, there were tiny shadows of people inside.

“She’ll be by later tonight, to do some touch ups. She got the paint from the high school, they were going to throw it out.” Julian pushed the trash cans up to the corner and stood next to Jake, looking up. “Don’t you kind of wish you could live on a station like that? Have the whole universe at your front door?” He sighed, casting a glance over the whole wall. “Maybe one day, you know?”

“Yeah,” breathed Jake, suddenly seized by a thought. “Hey- what time do you think she’ll be by?”

“Probably seven or so, that’s when she comes by to talk to Kira most evenings.” Julian was lost in his thoughts, looking at the station.

“Thanks, Julian!” With that, Jake took off, leaving Julian alone with his thoughts of a possible space station far away, and a life he’d never lead.

\----

Ziyal was leaning against the register, happily chatting with Kira about new ideas for the other sides of the building. “I was thinking today in art class- one side Bajor, and then maybe some of the Federation country landscapes, and maybe some of the Cardassian desert. I still have a lot of blue and white paint left over- that will work really well for the Andor mountains. I’m not sure if I’ll have enough for all of the landscapes, so I’ll have to see-“

“Hey Ziyal!” called out Julian from the back. “Jake’s here to see you!”

Ziyal stopped talking and then looked at Kira, confused. “But-“

Kira waved her on, smiling. “No, no, it’s fine. Go on.” Although Ziyal wasn’t staff at Deep Dish Nine, it was unspoken that she was allowed in the back. She passed through, waving hello at Jadzia and Worf, who were in a small shouting match about the merits of flat versus curved blades in close combat, and opened the back door to see Jake surrounded by at least two dozen cans of paint.

“What- what’s going on?” stammered Ziyal, taken aback by the sheer amount of paint. “Jake, where did you get all of this?”

“Julian told me that you got the thrown out paint from our high school, but there are other ones in the area. So Dad let me take the Defiant and pick up other cans from the other schools in the area. I had to fight another kid for the last batch, but-“

“You didn’t have to do that!” exclaimed Ziyal, rushing over to him, hugging him tightly. “Oh thank you! This means so much to me!”

Jake blushed and tried to keep cool. “No, I mean… you know, it makes the building look so much nicer, and… that’s a really cool space station,” he ended pathetically, trailing off as Ziyal stepped back and smiled at him, her face lighting up with happiness.

“I want to thank you for this. I’ll paint a scene from one of your stories. You write something, I’ll paint it- that is, if Kira allows it. And your father.”

“Actually… I had already written stories about a space station. I took people from the pizzeria- you know, like Dad and Manager Kira and Jadzia, and I put them on a station, and they go on adventures-“

“I’d love to paint scenes from that!” said Ziyal. “Maybe the south wall – it can be a changing gallery.” Her mind began to race with ideas, and she was eager to sketch out her ideas.

“Do you want to open them?” asked Jake, gesturing towards the cans. “I’m not one hundred percent sure what’s inside each one, but I know there is a lot of paint.”

Ziyal opened up the new cans, setting the lids aside to assess the contents. Ochre yellows, blood oranges, fiery reds, all of the colors she didn’t have enough of before.

“I think they’re all mixed colors, but I think it gives them character, you get two colors in one,” said Jake, watching her anxiously. “Are they good?”

Ziyal turned and smiled at him. “They’re perfect.”

They continued talking long into the evening, discussing stories of space captains, brave warriors, frontier doctors, undercover spies, artists, and a space station with the universe at its front door.

With the colors that no one else wanted, and a writer to give her art stories and meaning, Ziyal painted galaxies and nebulas, fantastic space stations, stories of love, loss, secrets, adventures, family, and friends.  

**Author's Note:**

> I recall lots of half-empty mixed paint cans after painting the sets for middle-school plays, and I can't recall re-using the old paint the next semester. So I wondered- what happened to the mixed paint? Then of course I had to think of DD9...
> 
> Also fun side note, I was going to write Garak in here at some point but I could not write it to not be Garak/Bashir and decided to spare people from the shipping for at least one of my stories.


End file.
